Nightfire (25 page)

Please
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“So.” Harry Bolt folded his hands on his desk. He wanted her to say why she was here but there was no pressure on her, none. It was a busy, successful company, that was clear from everything she’d seen, but he was giving her his time. “You’re a friend of my sister’s?”

Another breath. Just one more second of being normal.

She lowered her eyes, raised them. “Yes. It’s my fault Chloe was hurt. My fault and the fault of a few of my—my friends.”

Nothing changed in his expression. Consuelo turned her head slightly to look at the other man. Barney. No expression there, either.

“How so, Consuelo?” Bolt asked gently.

“She talked to us, encouraged us. Gave us a little courage. Some of us started to talk back. Rebel a little. They couldn’t stand it and they sent the Russians.”

He straightened suddenly, shooting a glance at the other man.

“The Russians? What Russians?”

Another deep breath. It had been such a brief moment.

She lowered her eyes again, spoke to her knees. “The Russians at the Meteor Club, where I work. Three men and their leader. A man called Nikitin. They’ve been there for about a year. They’ve put money into the club, a lot of it. There’s something coming, they’re preparing for something. Something big is about to happen.”

She finally raised her eyes, expecting to see scorn and disgust. Instead Harry Bolt looked thoughtful. He met the other man’s eyes again, tapping the desk with a pen. Both of them turned to her again but she saw absolutely nothing in their gaze to show they’d understood her. Nothing.

How could that be?

“Do you know what the Meteor Club is?” she blurted out.

“Yes, of course,” Bolt answered, mind obviously elsewhere. “So two of those Russians were the ones who attacked Chloe?”

Amazing. She had just told these two men she was a prostitute and they simply ignored it. She’d stoically thrown away her pleasure at being treated like a lady when she told them where she worked. Her chest had become tight, her breath shallow, but at their reactions, the tightness eased.

“Yes. Their names are Lyov and Ivan. They are thugs. Violent men. They beat up two of my friends at the Meteor. One had to be hospitalized. She was taken across the border for medical care. We never saw her again.”

“Hold on.” Harry Bolt never took his eyes off her as he picked up a cell phone and pressed just a couple of buttons. “Yeah,” he said suddenly as someone picked up at the other end. “Something has happened. We’ve got a lead on the men who attacked Chloe. Russians, she was right.” He listened. “Uh-huh. As soon as you can. Hurry.”

He switched off. “So why is it that they attacked my sister?”

“These Russians. They’re making some big investment, as I said. Something big is coming. The owner of the Meteor, Franklin Sands, is always trying to make a good impression on the Russians, wanting everything to be perfect. Chloe—she talked to us. Listened to us. Made us feel better. She has a special way, you know?”

Bolt nodded grimly. “Yes, she does.”

Consuelo wanted to rub her damp palms together, wanted to look at the floor again, but she did neither. She straightened her shoulders and looked Chloe’s brother right in the eyes.

“Chloe held group sessions. I don’t think it was really therapy, but I wouldn’t know. She listened, mostly. But all of us felt better afterwards. Felt better, felt cleaner. And then we had to go back. Back to the Meteor.” Her voice became hoarse. She coughed to clear it. “Each time, it was harder. And I guess we started rebelling a little. It wasn’t Chloe’s fault. She didn’t say anything to us about what we should do, how we should behave, but it was just—some of us couldn’t go on. Our boss, he was furious with us. He’s trying to make a good impression on the Russians. He doesn’t want any problems at all. Susie—one of us—said she was going to quit, that Chloe wanted her to quit. It wasn’t true. Chloe never said anything like that at all. She never gave us advice, never pushed in any direction, she just listened. But what Susie said was enough to make the Russians mad.”

“So that was it?” Bolt asked. “The reason why they attacked her?”

Consuelo nodded. “To get her to back off. Stop making waves.”

“Son of a bitch.” The man’s face grew even grimmer, white brackets appearing around his mouth. He looked briefly at the other man, who looked as if he wanted to hit someone, too. “Those men are going down. The top Russian, too.”

Her moment!

“This might help.” Consuelo dug the thumb drive out of her purse and slid it across the large, shiny desk. “I took it off the head Russian, this Nikitin. I don’t know his first name. It must contain something valuable. He kept it in his jacket pocket.”

“Intel, eh?” Bolt carefully examined the device. “Russian manufacture. I guess that’s not surprising.” He turned, plugged the thumb drive into his computer and watched the screen carefully. He manipulated some keys. Consuelo knew nothing about computers. It was forbidden for the girls to have computers.

Bolt made a sound of frustration. “It’s encrypted. Looks like a 216-bit encryption, too. That’s a pretty strong degree of protection. Take some doing to crack.”

Consuelo barely understood him. All she really grasped was that maybe what she’d brought wasn’t useful. She’d paid such a steep price for it. She blinked back tears. “You can’t read it?”

Oh God, she’d been counting on this. Counting that because of the thumb drive, they’d help her disappear. She’d left the Meteor forever, there was no going back. But if there was no going forward, either, what was going to happen to her?

“No, not without some work. And we’d need to find a cracker who speaks Russian.” Bolt spoke absently, then looked at her. Though Consuelo was used to hiding her emotions—all whores learned that or they couldn’t work—she found she couldn’t right now. What she was feeling was right there on her face.

She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think.

“What’s wrong?” That deep voice was suddenly gentle.

She twisted her hands, then stilled them. She looked down at herself and was horrified to see that the modest white cotton blouse was fluttering over her left breast as her heart pounded with panic.

She looked at Bolt and at the rough-looking man, Barney.

“I can’t go back,” she whispered. “I brought that to you as—as payment, because they say you help women disappear. I thought that if the Russian had information, it must be valuable. I can’t go back. I can’t—” Her voice broke and she stopped talking, breathing shallowly in her panic. “I can’t go back. I can’t go through that again. The Russian—he put a cloth over my face, poured water over the cloth and—”

The other man, Barney, all of a sudden stood up. “You were fucking
waterboarded
?” he roared, and Consuelo shrank back.

She’d long learned to recognize men’s moods, she had an animal instinct for it. And this man had turned dangerous.

She stiffened, turned her face blank.

“Can it, Barney,” Bolt said. “You’re not helping. You’re scaring the lady.” He nodded at her. “Sorry about that. Barney’s not angry at you, he’s angry at a man who could waterboard a woman. So you’ll have to excuse him, ma’am.”

She kept her back straight, turned to Bolt, then to the other man, this Barney, then back to Bolt. It had been nice being called a lady and addressed as “ma’am,” but though it made her feel dead inside, it had to be said.

“I’m not a lady, Mr. Bolt. If you know what the Meteor is, and you know that I work—worked—there, then you know what I am.”

“A beautiful woman,” Barney growled, and she turned back to him, startled. He’d had bad acne as a youngster. His sallow skin was pockmarked. His rough ugly face was flushed. “That’s what you are. Doing what my mom did, because she had three kids to feed and that was the only way to do it. There’s no shame. There’s plenty of shame for the motherfu—”

“Barney!” Bolt barked.

The man’s jaws worked back and forth. “Sorry, boss,” he said finally.

Consuelo hung her head, letting her hair fall down around her face, hiding it. Hiding her. A tear dropped on her thigh, making a tiny wet spot on her jeans.

Barney’s rough bass voice became soft. “The shame is not yours. It’s all on men who would do that to a woman.”

Consuelo continued staring at her knees. She couldn’t lift her face, she couldn’t talk, she couldn’t move, she could hardly breathe.

Bolt was talking softly into an intercom system. Nobody moved until the door opened. Consuelo didn’t turn around. It was probably someone else from the company.

Maybe to throw her out because she’d brought something completely useless.

It wasn’t a man, it was a woman. An extremely beautiful woman, tall, black-haired with intense blue eyes. For a moment, Consuelo thought,
She’d make them a fortune at the Meteor,
then was ashamed of herself.

This was a woman who was loved. She was followed by a big man, hand held to her back because she was hugely pregnant. Hovering over her, watching her like a hawk.

Girls at the Meteor didn’t get pregnant. Those that did were made unpregnant very fast. Consuelo hadn’t really ever experienced a couple that was expecting a child together. It was a novel thought. People had kids all the time, of course. It’s just that she hadn’t seen it. Her world and children did not mix.

Harry and Barney stood as the woman moved slowly but gracefully notwithstanding that huge belly. Barney pulled a chair over next to the desk and the woman sat down in it with a huge sigh. Her man—lover? husband?—stood behind her, huge hands on her shoulders.

Harry frowned at her. “What are you doing in the office when you’re going to pop the kid any second?”

She sighed again. “Yes, but I’m just finishing up a huge job and I wanted to clear the decks so I can take a couple of weeks off after the birth.”

“Couple of
months,
” the man behind her growled. It was protective, and endearing, even though he was scowling and looked quite frightening, almost as frightening as Barney, but the woman just laughed. “Weeks. I can do some work from home in the beginning, Sam.”

The man behind her—Sam?—huffed out a breath of exasperation through his nostrils, like a bull. The woman laughed again.

Sam looked at Bolt. “So what do we have here? Why’d you call Nicole?”

Ah. The beautiful woman’s name was Nicole.

“As long as Nicole’s here, I thought maybe she could help us.” Bolt handed her the thumb drive.

She looked at it curiously. “What’s on it?”

“I don’t know. It’s Russian, encrypted. And the files inside are probably Russian. You know Russian, don’t you?”

“A little. Enough to get the gist of a text.”

“And you told me you have this Russian computer whiz on your list of collaborators. Does technical translations. Do you think—”

“Oh yes.” Nicole smiled and Consuelo blinked. How could any woman a hundred months pregnant be so very beautiful? “Yes indeed. I think he’s just the man for the job. Is it urgent?”

“There might be information on the drive about the men who attacked Chloe.”

There was an electric silence.

Nicole held her hand out as if knowing that her husband’s hand would find it, and it did. He lifted her out of the chair.

“Then we’ll find out what’s on this drive just as fast as humanly possible,” Nicole declared, holding her hand out for the small drive. Her face had turned serious. “Harry, I’m confiscating your other computer.”

He nodded as Nicole sat down before a sleek laptop. She opened it, and with a beep it started up, the glow of the screen reflected on Nicole’s face. In a second, she was gone.

Nicole was deep into whatever she was doing, staring intently at the monitor, typing quickly, stopping, then starting again.

“Okay,” she said, sitting back, rubbing her belly. “I sent it off to my crazy cracker Russian friend Rudy. He never sleeps. He took a look and said it shouldn’t take long. He called it ‘Mafiya’ encryption, he’s used to it. Do you have a clue as to what’s in it?”

“It’s got something important in it, that’s for sure,” Bolt replied. He nodded to Consuelo. “She took it off the guy who ordered the attack on Chloe. The guy who waterboarded her.”

“Waterboarded?”
Nicole straightened, wincing. She held out her hand and her husband took it, gently helped her out of the chair.

Nicole walked over to her and put her hand on her shoulder. “You’re not going back to those horrible men.”

“That’s for damned sure,” her husband said. Bolt and Barney nodded.

Consuelo’s throat was tight, raw. She couldn’t speak, shook her head. “No.” Her voice came out like the sound a wounded animal would make. “Never.”

This was her opportunity. This is what she came for. But she couldn’t get the words out. All four of them watched her, three men, one woman, waiting with blank expressions for her to speak.

Consuelo had been trained in a hard school to repress her feelings, otherwise she couldn’t function in the Meteor. Some nights she repressed them so far down she thought they’d disappeared.